Collusion and collision

Apparat and Modeselektor exploit the friction
of collaboration as Moderat

WINTER OF OUR DISC CONTENT: Moderat

by JACK OATMON

“It was like building sculptures, destroying them and using the broken pieces to make new ones.” Gernot Bronsert is explaining the creation of Moderat, a highlight at Mutek this year, from a car on the road between San Francisco and Los Angeles. His transitory status somehow matches the vibe of the record. “When we went into the studio, we really had to change our way of working, how we see music and what we want to tell people with music.”

A clanking, nostalgic sonic journey through the German winter and the challenges of collaborative art, as well as a landmark in the progress of Berlin’s new techno vanguard, Moderat does more than just combine the cerebral beauty of Sascha Ring, aka Apparat, with Modeselektor’s id-infused, visceral style. It forges something thoughtful and fascinating from the friction between the dissimilar artists.

“We wasted a lot of time in the studio, three or four months, just trying to figure out how we can make music together. Being in the studio with Apparat was, I would say, a social experiment. We have such different characters. We’ve known him a long time. We did do one 12-inch seven years ago, but we didn’t take that seriously.”

The process was painstaking enough that 20 tracks remain unused and unreleased after completion of the album. The first successful collusions arose with the visual input of graphic design team Pfadfinderei. “After trying and trying, we realized the music was starting to sound like a soundtrack. That was the first thing that matched up and that all three of us liked about it. That was the point we actually started making music for the record.”

Bronsert says the process eventually led to an audiovisual description of change and new beginnings in his city. “It describes us and Berlin,” he says. “We made this record in the winter and it was really dark and cold and snowy and muddy. Berlin is not very nice in the winter. But it’s the soundtrack of a special time in Berlin that’s difficult to define. There was a period around 2001, when we met Apparat. Techno was dying and IDM was getting really big and a lot of things in Berlin were changing.”